To Church? or not to Church? That is the Question

I'm not particularly religious. I thoroughly resented thirteen years of being forced to attend Chapel services twice a week at Church of England school's and, up until a couple of years ago, the mere thought of voluntarily attending a religious ceremony of any kind made me feel faintly sick with boredom. However this festive season I've been going to carol services. For fun. And donating money to the Church in collections.

Now some of my more militantly atheist friends have found this deeply outrageous demanding how I can be so hypocritical or, in one slightly more extreme case, how I can support what is transparently a system of lies designed to control the masses with fear and concentrate power in the hands of the religious elite.

Well I have a few reasons:

1) I dunno about everyone else's but my local Church isn't an evil force full of corrupt priests seeking to control the congregation, it's rather nice. Aside for Church services they run a whole range of prayer groups, old folk befriending services, soup kitchens and charity ventures. True, not all Church-goers are the saintly types they'd like to pretend but there's a great big core of essentially good folk who combine their beliefs with helping people, and at Christmas I like to show my support for such good will, especially since there's rather too many people out there willing to mock them for their beliefs.

2) Jesus taught nice stuff! Of all the religions I've looked into the teachings of Jesus appeal to me most. Love thy neighbour? Do unto others as you would have others do unto you? Forgiving sins? One of his closest followers was a former prostitute! I'm not convinced that he was the son of God but for a man living a couple of thousand years ago in the Nazareth you've got to admit he was pretty forward thinking. In this time of trouble and strife I think it's nice to hear a bit about good will and peace.

3) And finally I get presents on Christmas day primarily because a nice fella called Jesus Christ died over 2000 years ago. I might not be a Christian myself but thanks to Christians once a year I get to eat hefty amounts of food, exchange gifts with my friends and see the family all together in a cheerful festive mood (a rare occurance). So what if it's just an appropriation of a pagan winter solstice festival into the Christian calender? I love Christmas and I see no problem with singing some cracking carols and donating a bit of money to the nice folk down at my local Church to thank them for it.

So that's why I like going to church at Christmas, and in this day and age where congregations are down and everyone's complaining about a lack of local community, if your a bit curious, why don't you go too?

...Though if you're utterly appalled by the idea and would rather sit in your nice warm house drinking hot chocolate and looking up funny things on the t'internet you can always check this out http://www.smosh.com/smosh-pit/photos/20-most-awkward-santas

Now I'm off to get ready for midnight mass, Merry Christmas everyone!!

H.B.

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Exploration Archive: Flat Pack Suburbia

Here we have a copy of my latest article for the North America section of the fabulous fledgeling online travel magazine Exploration Online. If you haven't heard about Exploration before and are interested in travel advice and anecdotes, fun facts or becoming a regular contributor yourself check it out! http://www.eruditiononline.co.uk/exploration/article.php?id=243

A few years ago I went to visit some of my increasingly vast collection of American cousins. All that I really knew about them was that they lived in a suburb of Chicago so, naturally, I was expecting it to be like London suburbs: connected to the main part of the city by a vast urban sprawl, narrow streets, narrow houses, a fair bit of traffic and lots of hurried looking people catching buses. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

My first experience of Orland Park was a slightly surreal one. Far from the stereotypical English suburbs I was greeted by a picture book American one: huge houses, wide streets, kids playing in the road, neighbours waving to each other and nothing that resembled a city in sight (turns out Chicago itself is a good 40 kilometres and a 45 minute train journey away). It was adorable.

After talking to my aunt and uncle about it I discovered that, for them, it was truly a dream home. They are in the late seventies; my aunt met my uncle when he was a GI stationed in England during the war. They fell in love and moved to America. Years later, after long careers and raising five children, they bought a plot of land in Orland Park, picked what elements they wanted in their house out of a catalogue, watched it being built and settled in. Their grown-up children were also impressed; so impressed that most of them bought their own flat-pack dream homes in the area and now live within a twenty minute drive of each other. They spend much of their time working, going to church, hanging out with the neighbours and having extended family bowling nights. They love it. Their kids however, aren’t so impressed.

The majority of my younger cousins are around my age, and most of them can’t wait to get out of Orland Park. It’s boring. There’s nothing fun to do within walking distance and all their neighbours know both them and at least one or two of their relatives so there’s little chance of getting away with any misdemeanours. What is a safe little slice of American paradise to their middle aged and elderly relatives is just dull and frustrating to most people under the age of 30. And I kind of saw what they meant; my time in America was spent being handed from cousin to cousin of various generations to be shown stuff, taken to things and constantly entertained, whilst also having a random selection of their friends and neighbours drop by to meet ‘the English girl’. It was sweet and really well meaning, but a little stifling. Yet living close to way too many of your relatives who know almost every detail of your day-to-day life must be even worse for my cousins.

Despite all this, Orland Park does look like an amazing place to grow up. It’s safe, secure and all your friends live near-by. Having spent my childhood split between a small countryside village, Rugby town, Oxford and (more briefly) London, and having few close relatives beyond my immediate family, I can honestly say I’ve never experienced anything quite like it in the UK. And I’m sure, once my cousins have kids of their own, they’ll look back at Orland Park and its flat-pack monotony with a lot more fondness.

The Fourth Wall Theatre Network

I'm 21. I'm a massive nerd about my course, work part time in a rather nice student job, do a lot of extracurricular and voluntary activities and have met a wide range of prestigious leaders from a variety of fields. I thought this was pretty impressive. Then I heard about what a friend of mine, Dan Bridgewater, has been up to.

I know Dan through the UpRising Leadership programme, he's in his first year at uni and I've known for a while that he's working on a social enterprise aimed at making theatre companies in schools called the Fourth Wall Theatre Network. He's a pretty motivated, entrepreneurial guy so I figured it'd be pretty good but I've got to admit, after attending the launch of The Fourth Wall Theatre Network at the Custard Factory on Thursday, I was really impressed.

The Fourth Wall Theatre Network is a group of young people, lead by Dan, who aim to create a network of sustainable theatre companies within schools. The team offer a variety of competitive packages which involve them coming into schools, offering 24 weeks of a couple of hours of drama and business workshops per week and offering a small group of interested 'leaders' within the school 4 weeks of mentoring and leadership training to enable them to set up their own theatre company. At the end of the programme the kids put on a showcase of whatever drama they decided to create and, depending on which package the school selects and pays for, even get to keep a portion of the ticket sales. And on the subject of fees The Fourth Wall Theatre Network's top package costs just a minuscule £500, not bad for 28 weeks of stuff!

To me, it's a really great idea. It teaches kids invaluable skills at every level, whether they are interested in performing, lighting, set design, costume, producing, directing, setting up a business or anything in between it provides opportunities for young people to take initiative and learn how to lead. It's not just about a nice bit of drama, it's about creating leaders and giving kids the skills they need to make it in this tough economic climate, whilst having a lot of fun in the process.

What Dan and his team have put together isn't just good for a group of young people, it's good full stop. The business plan makes sense on every level and what they've come up with is both original and good value for money. There's no one doing exactly what they are in Birmingham and the equivalent cost per hour of drama workshops offered by their nearest competitor would be close to £4000 where The Fourth Wall Theatre Network's top package is a mere £500.

It's pretty awesome stuff! And if you fancy finding out a bit more about who these guys are and what they can offer for schools check out their website http://www.fourthwalltheatre.co.uk

H.B.

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UpRising meet BAP

So I didn't win the women's officer election...and I've decided that in between my job, extra curricular stuff and desperately attempting to end my final year on a first (could happen?) I maybe don't have time to organise a week of women's rights events from scratch, figure out the non guild officer/council member paperwork protocol and recruit a team of helpers to organise and run it on the day just before my dissertation is due in. So, sadly, International Women's Week is off...unless someone else wants to do it?

On the plus side I very much intend to continue campaigning for women's rights by joining in with some lovely external projects. But more on that later, this post is about the BAP.

Ok. What's the BAP?

Well it's the British American Project, a gathering of rather successful individuals aged under 40 picked from both sides of the Atlantic for their already impressive achievements and potential to accomplish a heck of a lot more.

So, as I'm sure you can imagine, after being told that the wonderful UpRising programme had joined forces with the BAP to offer specially selected UpRisers (including myself) an opportunity to meet these fabulous people in a day of networking and 'speed mentoring' I was just a little bit intimidated...but mostly quite excited. Particularly after being sent the 92 page document containing their rather impressive biographies.

Last Saturday myself and a group of other Birmingham UpRisers made our way up to London to meet the BAP. Our journey was full of delays (thanks network rail) but the event was brilliant.

The vast majority of the event consisted of 'speed mentoring', where one UpRiser was assigned two or three members of the BAP and asked a series of questions about their experience, interests and ambitions. After fifteen minuets a whistle was blown and the UpRiser had to move to the side of the room for a couple of minutes while the BAP'ers filled in a feedback form about how the UpRiser presented him or herself. Then the UpRiser had to pick another group of BAP'ers and the process started all over again.

For me, it was a really worthwhile experience. Members of the BAP come from so many different professional backgrounds and their own personal journeys are so diverse that each grouping had different advice to offer and new perspectives on my ambitions, goals and potential.

Stand out conversations for me include:

- Discussing the ridiculous nature of policy creation in Westminster with Murphey Cobbing (BBC radio producer), Tim Nuthall (Media Manager of the European Climate Foundation) and Robert Wilton (diplomat and writer of short stories and essays on politics and history)

- Hearing amusing tales of entrepreneur Paige Davis's family conferences and feedback sessions experienced as a small child, in her words 'looking back it was kind of controlling but it bred entrepreneurial spirit into me'

- And last but certainly not least, chatting to former apprentice Tim Campbell and International Director of CBI Rhian Chilcott. I'm very interested in potentially getting into lobbying on behalf of business groups one day so to talk to someone with Rhian's great mass of experience was just brilliant. Especially once Rhian explained that she didn't start off working for business groups but in fact a feminist pressure group, lobbying for more women in parliament. Her advice was that, wherever I think I want to end up, I should start by trying to work on things that I care passionately about because I'll try harder, work longer and build up more experience, expertise and contacts then if I just do something I'm not so fussed about. It's pretty good advice! And has certainly got me thinking about some more specific organisations and areas I'm going to apply to work in after uni.

There was of course lots more great advice received, interesting people met and stories recounted but what impressed me the most about the BAP was their approachable sense of enjoyment. They were having fun. They bantered with the 'master of ceremonies' Olly Barrett, joked between themselves and confessed to going out the night before and intending to again that night. They provided serious advice, without appearing too serious and unapproachable themselves.

So in short I really enjoyed the UpRising - BAP event and hope that if I'm ever successful enough to get invited to join a similar network, I'll be able to offer other young people as much good advice as the BAP'ers offered me...at least I hope I'll still be saying that when I receive my feed back forms later this week :s

Thanks BAP!

H.B.
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Vote 'Henrietta is Better' for Women's Officer!!

I’m running for Women’s Officer at University of Birmingham!! So here’s a quick blog post to let you know what I’m all about and what I plan on doing if I win.

As you UofB’ers may have noticed the Women’s Rights movement within the University of Birmingham is pretty dead. No one at all ran for Women’s Officer in the first round of elections last academic year and even now in the by-elections there are only two candidates standing for it.

 I want to change all this.

I first found out that we don’t currently have a Women’s Officer by accident. I’ve been working on organising a week of events surrounding International Women’s Day in March for a couple of months now and I figured the best way to get it off the ground with the guild would be to get the Women’s Officer on board. At which point I was told there wasn’t one.

To begin with I was pretty shocked but then I realised, if it hadn’t been for unfortunate events in my own life (see the post below) I wouldn’t particularly care about women’s rights either. It’s hardly a well-publicised area of concern and the crazy feminist stereotype (unfairly in my opinion) associated with campaigning for Women’s Rights is pretty off putting for most people. So I decided ‘you know what, this is something I care about and I really believe I can make a difference’ and I’m running for it.

In the UK recently released statistics show that female managers are paid an average of £10,000 less a year then male colleagues doing exactly the same job. This is technically illegal and recent legislation now means that all employees have the right to ask what their colleagues are being paid. If I win the election I will organise some workshops on ‘How to Be Assertive in the Workplace’ teaching women how to find out if they are being treated unfairly and what to do about it.

The second most frequently reported crime in the UK is domestic violence. An average of one in four women will experience domestic abuse in their life time. If I win the election I will promote domestic abuse charities around campus with the aim that, if a woman in this establishment encounters abuse they know where to go to get help. I will also raise awareness of organisations working with men who are afraid of becoming abusers. Often abusers don’t set out to be violent to their partners and if I can help make them aware of where to get help before it is too late I think it’d be in the best interests of the whole university community.

Around the world there are many issues affecting women; from forced marriage to gendercide in China and India to FGM and sex trafficking. In the week surrounding International Women’s Day (8^th March) I will organise a week of events, working with both external charities and university societies, to raise awareness of a different gender inequality issue each day and fundraise for selected charities. I've already started contacting university societies and have found a selection of charities and brummie business women and journalists who are interested in supporting this idea and working together to make this event a reality. It was through starting to organise this that I first found out that there wasn't a Women’s Officer so, even if I don’t win the election, I will still try and run this event…though of course being Women’s Officer would definitely make the paperwork a lot easier!

So that’s what I want to do and I hope you agree that ‘Henrietta is Better’ for Women’s Rights and Vote Henrietta between October 24^th and 28^th!!

H.B.

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The Accidental Feminist

I never wanted to be a feminist.

In fact at school I’d occasionally get called a ‘feminist’ during debates in my politics classes as an insult. And I’d take it as such, furiously denying that I was anything of the sort.

Like a depressingly high proportion of my generation I believed that Women’s Rights and Feminism were dead issues. The Women’s Rights revolution had already happened. We live in an equal world, and anyone still kicking about that old chestnut was either of the misguided opinion that women deserve superiority over men or was just plain odd.

It wasn’t until something bad happened that I began to take gender equality and feminism seriously.

In my first year at uni I was contacted by a friend I hadn’t spoken to in a couple of years. After meeting up with her it became apparent that the reason I hadn’t heard from her was because she’d been involved in an abusive relationship.

It was the usual story: her former boyfriend had started off incredibly charming, won her over and showered her with all sorts of affection. Until they started living together at which point he began to change, became more and more demanding, selfish, controlling and angry, changed the affection for insults and psychological games, he’d go out with his friends when he pleased but bully her out of seeing hers and into staying in the house, and even starting to abusively threaten her.

It was after the first time that he physically hurt her that she made the decision to leave him. But visible damage had already been done. The first time I met up with her after that relatively short space of time the outgoing, confident girl I knew was uncomfortable just being out in public.

This got me thinking about two things:

1) How shockingly easy it is for intelligent outgoing women to be sucked into abusive relationships through no fault of their own

And

2) Said friend is very wealthy and she was only able to build up the courage to leave her ex whilst he was out of the country. What happens to women who don’t have separate incomes or this kind of absence to allow escape?

Then I started researching domestic abuse charities and my journey into becoming a feminist snowballed from there. Here are some fun facts for you:

-          Domestic abuse is the second most frequently reported crime in the UK

-          Domestic abuse charities receive less per annum in donations than donkey sanctuaries

We live in a country where the population value abused donkeys over abused women.

Something’s not quite right here.

From there I looked into issues in the UK like the wage gap, the fact that when applying for graduate jobs most employers will see the likelihood that I will probably one day have children as a reason not to employ me, the massive discrepancy between the women in certain industries (like PR) and the number of women managers and a whole host of international issues from gendercide to human trafficking and bride abduction, to the stoning of women for being raped in parts of Africa and the Middle East.

And I realised that I have a problem with this. Therefore I am a feminist.

Women in the UK are letting themselves down. The Women’s Rights Revolution only happened in the last few generations. Where my grandmother dreamt of being a secretary and marrying a rich man my mother is a doctor with her own pretty decent independent income.

The change is recent. As a result many culturally entrenched views on women, what they can and can’t do, how competent they are in the workplace and what they are good for are still pervasive.

You only have to look at the city and see that the stereotypical ‘business man’s night out’ of taking clients to a lap dancing club is still very much a common place or look at the composition of the Houses of Parliament to note the preponderance of men compared to women.

There’s also the case that now women have all the rights of men, but are still expected to fulfil the traditional ‘duties’ of a woman. In many families both parents have to work in order to create a comfortable lifestyle, or, in low income families, just to pay the bills. Who then has to do all the additional work of cooking, cleaning and childrearing? In most cases it’s the woman. I’m not saying that we should create a generation of house husbands but we do need to work towards making it more culturally acceptable for men to take on a more equal part in these domestic roles.

This is not me saying that ‘men’ are to blame. Of course they aren’t. Yes a small minority hold misogynistic views but there are almost certainly an equal number of women with extreme views on men, or even women with misogynistic views on women. Both genders are as bad (and good) as each other.

The problem now is changing cultural perceptions that are held by both men and women in our society. We need people to recognise that yes there have been mighty leaps forward in tackling gender inequality over the past century, but we’re not finished yet.

Where homosexual and ethnic minority groups are still pushing to end the discrimination against them which should by law be non-existent, women have, for the greater part, stopped trying.

The modern feminist movement isn’t about burning bras and shouting slogans. It’s about promoting the idea that it is ok for women to complain if they are treated unfairly just for being women, without having all the negative stereotypes of ‘the crazy feminist’ thrust upon them.

So I implore you, leave behind any qualms you might have about boot wearing, hairy faced, man hating nutters and bear in mind this modern view of what a feminist is: someone who has a problem with the statistics and thinks things need to change.

And with this far more realistic definition in mind; there are plenty of men and women I know who’d probably be horrified to learn that they are feminists too.

H.B.

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A Very British Kind of Justice

Something is rotten in the British Justice system.

Like most ordinary law abiding citizens I’d always assumed that the British Justice system was here for me, to keep me safe from false accusations and punish the guilty criminals. That is until I actually experienced it.

Last summer my then sixteen year old brother was badly beaten up at a party by a gang of ten guys. He’d been walking down a corridor, a lad pushed into him and started shouting at him, he shouted back, the guy started to threaten him so he walked away. Ten minutes later, not wanting to ruin the party for his friends he decided to go back in and say sorry.

He was immediately hit in the face, heard saying by a room full of witnesses ‘what are you doing I’m trying to apologise’ before being thrown to the ground and receiving kicks to the head and face. His jaw was broken in three places and his ribs and back were badly bruised. If his friends hadn’t intervened and pulled him out of there they would have carried on kicking. It would have been a lot worse.

What followed was the irksomely slow process of interviews and statement taking. An identity parade didn’t take place until a month later by which time, given that he’d never seen his assailants before that night, his memory was already not the sharpest and he was only able to identify one of his attackers, the boy who had first shoved in to him, first hit him in the face and first started kicking.

Over a year later we were finally told that a trial had been scheduled and he’d need to come in and give evidence, I went with him to offer my support.

Naturally, given the weight of evidence and the room full of witnesses my family and I were expecting a quick, simple trial followed by a conviction. Wrong.

From the moment we got there I knew something was off. The only two witnesses testifying were girls who hardly knew my brother and the third, an actual good friend of his, hadn’t shown up and the court were forced to issue a summons.

It quickly became apparent that they had been being threatened by the defendant and his friends. One girl had even received a text showing a photo of her statement, illegally taken by the defendant after he’d been shown it in a meeting with his solicitor, showing her name and address and the words ‘if you come to court you’re dead’.

The police response? As he'd sent it to a friend, who had then sent it to her there was nothing they could do, despite the fact that only he could have taken the photo.

It emerged that this ‘boy’ was already well known to the police, although never convicted of any priors, for his involvement in drug dealing, petty crime and violence, including against former girlfriends.

The witnesses were so terrified they asked to be given screens so he couldn’t see their faces during the trial, but that didn’t stop the crown court telling us all to go for lunch at the same time, resulting in them having to walk past the defendant while he was smoking outside.

And this is just the beginning. The first five hours of court were devoted to talking about such important issues as ‘what order to call the witnesses in now one hasn’t shown up’ and whether a policeman had a door open or shut behind him as he’d asked a witness a question (fun fact, court sessions cost the country £2000 per hour).

Then, after 6 hours of waiting, my brother was called as a witness. We got all the way upstairs to the court door before being told, actually the prosecution had changed the order without telling anyone, completely going against the order that had been debated over for hours that morning, and had actually asked for a different witness.

A present policeman commented that the barrister that my brother had been assigned (in crown prosecutions you don’t get a choice over who prosecutes your case) is known for funny turns, ambiguous questions and unfathomable behaviour.

In the end we were sent home and told to come back the next day. My brother was called as a witness the next morning.

Still, despite the incompetence of the court we were still thinking ‘It’s an air tight case, good witnesses, evidence of intimidation, what can go wrong?’ a lot apparently.

In the end the far more capable defence made it appear that each of the witnesses had placed the defendant in slightly different places in the room, making it unclear whether he was actually responsible for my brother’s really quite serious injuries. No one bothered to mention that the event had taken place over a year ago, all of the witnesses agreed he was responsible and a chief attacker and no one’s memory is film footage perfect, especially after that length of time.

The end result was a hung jury. In about a year my brother and the girls who’ve been so terrified by this process will have to go through it all over again. And for one of them this gang know where she lives.

As the policeman who was talking us through the process stated; ‘justice isn’t a balance, it’s entirely in favour of the defendant, no one talks about the rights of the witnesses’.

Soon after I heard about an acquaintance of mine whose mum had been badly beaten by his stepfather. His stepfather had walked free from court. Why? Because the only witnesses were the acquaintance and his mother, and he was known to have a problem with his stepfather so his testimony was discounted (ignoring the fact that this ‘problem’ stemmed from his stepfather regularly beating up his mother). She has now had to move to another town after receiving physical threats.

The current Crown Court system treats victims abysmally. It makes already emotionally distressed people sit in small, airless rooms for hours and hours whilst the court wastes time and money on pedantic issues before throwing them to the mercy of the defence who we were warned employ psychological tricks and go out of their way to make you appear confused. It allows scared victims to come face to face with their attackers outside the court and then allows brutal aggressors to walk free without consequence whilst victims and witnesses are left vulnerable to their retribution.

I understand the need to ensure that innocent people aren't convicted but there is no denying that something is rotten in the British Justice system. And it’s innocent people who are suffering for it.

Exploration Article Archive: Gendercide

Here's the latest article I've written for Exploration Online Magazine (as you can probably tell I've got women's right's issues on the brain at the mo!). For those who have stumbled across this page looking up the International Women's Week project 'All Girls Allowed' is one of the charities I'm going to propose fundraising for.

Please also bear in mind that I've tried to keep this article as short as possible and I haven't touched on other issues such as the fact that suicide is now the most common form of death amongst women aged 15-34 in rural China. Many studies link this to their inability to cope with knowing their daughters have been aborted or murdered. So err as you can see it's a lot more serious then my previous Exploration Asia offerings but, as I'm sure you'll agree, it's an incredibly serious issue.

In this article I’m not going to write about an amusing travelling anecdote, review a travel book or recommend a youth hostel. Instead I am going to talk about a disturbing cultural trend that is visible throughout much of China, India, Korea and Singapore as well as parts of Eastern Europe. The dramatic rise in the number of baby boys compared to girls as a result of the selective destruction of female foetuses and the shocking commonality of the murder or new born baby girls. This trend is more commonly known as ‘gendercide’.

As most of us are probably aware, it is a fair bit tougher being a woman in much of Asia than it is in the UK. I first heard of the ‘gendercide’ and the associated issues a couple of years ago from a South Korean lady called Wisteria.

Wisteria never wanted to get married. In South Korea women are still, generally speaking, expected to fulfil all of the stereotypical gender roles that we in the UK associate more with the first half of the 20^th century then the second decade of the 21^st. She wanted a career. And combining that with the over 40 hours of cooking, cleaning, tidying, caring for family members and attending to her husband and children’s needs the average Korean wife is expected to do a week would be impossible.

In this modern era of readily available ultra-sound scans these strongly held gender stereotypes have had some quite brutally shocking and unexpected consequences on the composition of many Asian communities, particularly with regard to male to female ratios.

The Asian country with the male to female children ratio most above what is statistically natural is China. To many this at first appears to be an unprecedented side effect of the one child policy – it is more profitable for couples to have a boy than a girl. Inheritance is passed through the male line and far more traditional approaches to gender roles see men being culturally valued and considered more lucrative to their families than women.

Where couples can only have one child, as in many provinces in China, those who can afford it will often take gender tests to try and ensure that child is male by aborting female foetuses. In poorer regions of rural China where gender tests aren’t so readily available or affordable there are many truly horrendous reports about just how wide spread the murder of new born baby girls, and the blind eye the authorities turn to it, is.

To put into perspective how wide spread this phenomena is recent estimates show that over the next decade there will be an estimated 30-40 million more men aged 19 or below than women in China. These men, unable to find brides and see the increase in social standing that being well married affords them are known as ‘bare branches’.

Rather than simply being an unwanted side effect of the one child policy ‘bare branches’ are an increasing feature in other countries with similar cultural views on women that don’t operate a one child policy. In India, for instance, women are generally expected to leave their parents family upon marriage and join their husbands. Parents wanting to increase the family wealth and be taken care of in their old age want sons.

As a result ‘gendercide’ is a feature there just as it is in China. In recent surveys one Bombay clinic reported that out of the last 8000 abortions they had performed 7999 where on female foetuses.

The ‘bare branches’, the unmarried young men this cultural preference produces bear hazards of their own. Over the past 20 years the crime rate in China has doubled. In all affected countries tales of bride abduction, trafficking women and widespread rape are common place. Many studies state that a correlation between this and the unnatural male to female ratio are most likely linked. It’s a serious situation.

Based on the unnatural male to female ration in these parts of the world as many as a staggering 163million baby girls have been aborted, murdered, left to die or are simply ‘missing’. Charities such as Save the Children and UNICEF are doing some work to put a stop to this devastating practice, but specific programmes are few, far between and hard to locate. One which is doing some amazing work in the area is the relatively unknown ‘All Girls Allowed’ (check out http://www.allgirlsallowed.org/ending-gendercide to find out more).

This is not to say that Asia isn’t an amazing, incredible and beautiful place to visit. In fact you are probably wondering why I am writing about such a serious matter on a light-hearted travel website. I think that if you are going to travel to a region and you really want to get to know it, its culture and history, it is important to know what issues exist below the surface. It is easy to be a tourist and just focus on the nice, attractive holiday hotspots but it is only through seeing what is really going on beneath the gloss, the negative as well as the good, that you can truly say you have experienced Asia.

If you are at all interested in finding out more about the ‘gendercide’, its causes and consequences or the Eastern European side of the story take a look at a now old but still incredible informative article from the Economist last year http://www.economist.com/node/15636231?story_id=15636231 and the many articles the same magazine has run on the subject since.

Or Chinese journalist Xinran’s book Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother which features a compilation of real life stories from those who have given up, aborted or abandoned their daughters.

H.B.

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International Women's Week: The Plan

I've spent all morning at the societies fair telling groups to 'check out my blog for more info'...so I should probably actually put some more info up.

Basically I want to organise a week of events surrounding international women's day on 8th March. Each day I want to fundraise for a different related charity and raise awareness of gender inequality issues from across the globe. I'm already starting to contact external organisations and charities to try and get a mix of folks to come in, offer workshops and hand out leaflets etc.

The 8th March itself will be devoted to championing the great work that women do around the world, and the amazing leaps and bounds forwards in gender equality we've seen over the past century. I've already started chatting to some prominent business women about getting involved and am going to start contacting various authors, politicians, charitable campaigners and all sorts of people too.

So where do University Societies come in?

I want University Societies to help out by running an event or events of their own during International Women's Week to raise awareness of/money for fighting the issues we're going to highlight. Or if they can't/don't want to get that involved just raise awareness of the event and promote it to their members.

I want all sorts of people from different social, cultural, ethnic, departmental, whatever, backgrounds involved. I believe these issues affect people across the board and the best way to get individuals interested is through first person contact. I can send a million emails about this, but nothing will persuade people to come and get involved more than word of mouth.

So you've decided your group might quite like to run a pub quiz/bake sale/sponsored something/play/performance/bar crawl/lecture/unusual fundraiser, what then?

We will put all of the information about your event in a nice shiney booklet detailing the programme for the week and short profiles on involved societies. These booklets will be distributed around campus and the info will also be readily available online so it's a lot of great publicity for your group! We will be asking for a donation (amount tbc) to go towards printing costs, and a minimum of 50% of your event's profits to go to selected charities but you get to keep up to 50% of the profits to put back into your groups own events. So it's a pretty good deal really!

The kind of issues I want to highlight are things like domestic abuse, the wage gap, the gendercide in China and India, sex trafficking and FGM...I don't think you just have to be a woman or a feminist to care about stuff like this and think it's wrong. That's why I want to work with as many different kinds of societies and people as possible.

The charities we are fund-raising for and the issues we're highlighting haven't been decided yet and will be voted on in a meeting with interested groups, so if you've got a particular issue or charity you want us to focus on, let us know!

So I hope you fancy getting involved! If you've got any questions, want to help out or anything at all email me at HXB916@bham.ac.uk and I'll get back to you asap!

ta

H.B.
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You Know What, I Like Nick Clegg

Today I met Nick Clegg. I'm not joking. Thanks to the amazing UpRising programme I was invited to take part in a presentation on said programme to the Deputy Prime Minister.

When I was told I was going to be doing this I assumed that the venue would be some massive conference hall and the UpRising Alumni Advisory Board would just shuffle on stage, say our bit, be vaguely acknowledged, get a brief round of applause and shuffle off again before a representative from another programme took the floor and the discourse moved on.  I couldn't have been more wrong.

The event took place in the intimately small Nomad Room at the Custard factory and a relatively entourage free Nick Clegg sat front and centre, mere feet from those presenting. On top of this Nick, who has been a patron of the UpRising programme for the last three years, revealed that not only was this the first event he's attended in Birmingham this visit (before even his own party conference) but in fact the only non party related event he's going to be going to. And that's not for want of invitations. It was also being filmed and beamed out live to BBC and Sky News 24.

There was a brief introduction from Zehra Zaidi, the brilliant Birmingham UpRising co-ordinator followed by the UAAB presentations in which I took part (and sneakily managed to promote the gender equality project I'm working on). At this point I should probably explain what the UAAB is: it's the UpRising Alumni Advisory Board: the board is made up of committed UpRisers who were selected out of a range of applicants for their dedication to the programme, we now work with the organisers to act as a sounding board for the programme and represent UpRisers at amazing events like this.

The UAAB presentations took the form of each of us talking for 2minutes about what the programme means to us and what our best moments from it were. Each did ourselves proud (if I do say so myself) but the highlights for me were Michael Olajide talking about his journey from Nigeria, to innercity London to Birmingham and the UpRising programme, Jessica Woodley talking about the programmes dedication to diversity and how coming from a mixed race, working class, innercity background it's helped her believe in herself and her own potential and Daniel Bridgewater talking about how its helped him gain the confidence, know-how and networks to set up his own company/social enterprise: the North Wall Theatre Company before he's even started uni. Their stories really summed up what UpRising is all about.

Then it was Nick's turn; he offered his response to the programme and, after a couple of pre-selected questions from chair and UAAB member Mobeen Amin, he opened the Q&A session up to the floor. Prior to the event we'd been told that all questions had to be cleared by his office first. In fact just before he arrived we were given a sheet of paper with said questions on and told to hand them out to other non-UAAB UpRisers to ask. So you can imagine my surprise when, instead of merely taking questions from the designated people he just picked whoever had their hand up, including me. I wont bore you with the details of all that was asked and said (I believe the event went out live on BBC and Sky News 24 so if you're interested I'm sure you can dig out the whole thing somewhere) but I will give you some edited highlights:

In response to my question of 'the latest statistics show 3/4 of those convicted in the recent riots already had numerous criminal convictions, what do you think the government can do to identify wayward individuals, preferably after their first offence, and educate them and help get them out of that lifestyle and involved in their communities before they become habitual offenders?' (originally even more poorly phrased and in a nervous manner of course) Nick told us about his views, some of which are already being made into policy:
- He agreed with the need to educate, not just condemn and abandon convicts calling the current prison system 'university for criminals...all it does is churn out better more hardened criminals'
- Stated that 'all prisoners are now met on release by someone whose job it is to keep them on the straight and narrow, the coalition government pays for them'
- And talked about wanting to implement 'restorative justice' whereby criminals are forced to meet their victims, apologise and help rebuild their lives. He also talked about putting criminals to work, paying them a wage and teaching them skills but having a portion of their wage go into a 'victims fund'
- He stated that whilst it is important to help criminals so they don't repeat offend, you can't overlook the fact that they have committed a crime and should be punished accordingly, and you can't ignore those who come from tough backgrounds and don't commit crimes; they should get just as much, if not more extra help.

In response to questions about how to improve the diversity of political parties, both ethnically and in gender terms, he stated:
- He couldn't agree more, the major political parties are too much like him 'pale and male' and he's implementing programmes within the Lib Dems to try and address this issue within his own party

And of course there were the inevitable questions about education and tuition fees:
-Whilst he didn't necessarily defend the obscene hike in tuition fees he did say that he hoped it would do some good to the country; he believes that we place far too much importance on academic qualifications and we should also be focusing on sorting out vocational qualifications which he referred to as currently being a 'spaghetti' like 'mess' and 'mistrusted by employers'.
- He brought up a new coalition policy which provides all very young children 15 hours free pre-schooling a week to help take some of the strain off working parents and give them a better start in life. (In my opinion it's a damn good policy and, bless him, he clearly thought so too saying 'I wish the people would talk about some of our other policies like this one sometimes')

Overall Nick Clegg came across as a really nice guy. During the speeches he was attentive and I know that during mine whenever I made eye-contact with him he smiled encouragingly, which was much appreciated given the pre-presentation nerves I'd been suffering from! He even made jokes about his own and the lib dem's reputation commenting 'Up Rising would a be good slogan for my party given what's happening to us at the moment!'. And even without all that, he took an hour out of his obscenely busy schedule just to come and talk to us. After the event he made no attempt to network with prominent individuals, promote his own policies or anything like that he just posed for some photos with us UpRisers and left. Admittedly, having some nice soft press about how Nick cares about young people may of been part of his motive for coming, but it certainly didn't come across like that. He seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself and eager to meet and help inspire young people, as well as support the UpRising programme as a whole.

So in short, whatever his successes and failures in parliament, when it comes to personality I like Nick Clegg. And regardless of his motives, the media coverage he's afforded the UpRising programme just by meeting with us will do a heck of a lot of good when it comes to recruitment and finding funding. Ta Nick!

H.B.
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Oh for a brief bit of news footage covering the event check this out:

Coffee with a Lord, as you do

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to meet Lord Digby Jones for coffee with a few of my fellow UpRisers.

I was very excited about this event. I've been organising it for months. So you can imagine my self-directed annoyance when I managed to cock up the time of the meeting, telling two of my fellow UpRisers that the meeting was to begin at 3pm...when actually it was 2pm (with the relative chaos I returned to from Europe at home and uni I suppose something had to give, but that was a pretty big mistake to make :s ). Fortunately I like to be early, a whole hour early in fact so I managed to contact everyone and disaster was averted. 

From that less then promising start the meeting turned out to be a total success. For those who don't know Lord Digby Jones is a very successful businessman, originally hailing from Alvechurch just outside of Birmingham. He's proven his mettle, and business know how, in a variety of fields starting in law with Edge&Ellison (1980-2000), moving on to public affairs as Director General of CBI (2000-2006) and leaping into politics as Minister of State for UK Trade & Investment  (2007-2008). He was knighted for services to business in 2005 and made a life peer in 2007. He's also a surprisingly down to earth and friendly guy with a passion for socially inclusive business and a palpable love for his country and its business sector.

The conversation flowed easily and after giving a brief introduction to what the UpRising programme is, does and what it aims to achieve we moved on to a general chat about how to set up a business before a question and answer session on a wide range of topics. So much was discussed, in fact, that picking out a few key points and interesting responses is pretty tough, but for me the most memorable moments were:

1) Fellow UpRiser Brook Simons-Akwah is in the process of setting up a brand new business/social enterprise aimed at helping young entrepreneurs set up their own businesses by working with the council to utilise empty shops and offices. UpRiser Daniel Blyden also runs his own business (YEP Media http://yepmedia.co.uk/). They wanted advice on what it takes to make a start-up business a success. Over the course of the discussion Lord Jones provided some very clear and to the point advice:

-         'It takes bloody hard work. I've worked my balls off every day of my life and I still do’

-         ‘The people who make things look easy work harder, prepare more, and leave nothing to chance'

-         ‘You’ve got to have confidence …every day I look in the mirror and think “my god I love you” …the inappropriately named ‘soft’ skills are important, nobody likes a limp handshake’

2) Given Lord Jones's experience as a leader in a variety of fields I was interested in what he thought about free leadership programmes, such as UpRising and what skills he thought they should be teaching. His response was very interesting, not least because of the very precise and technical nature of the skills he thought were important:

- ‘[programmes like UpRising are] extremely worthwhile, but they are only worthwhile if they operate on three levels: the first is if they get young people talking and understanding risk in business, the second is that they bring bright minds together and the third is if they have clearly stated aims and know what they want to achieve’

- ‘[they need to teach young people] how to write a business plan, get them understanding capital and cash flow…they need to understand that they have to deliver and have discipline’

3) Earlier this year Lord Jones published a book entitled ‘Fixing Britain’ detailing his views on what Britain needs to do to improve its economy and skill up its work force (I recommend giving it a read, it’s surprisingly interesting and easy to absorb). Whilst certain sections talk a lot of sense I had to query a few – namely one section where he proposes increasing the number of male primary school teachers by offering them higher wages than women and another where he proposes freely encouraging trade with countries that, shall we say, don’t exactly have the best human rights track records – so I asked: how far should businesses take into account moral and social problems in their actions? And I again received a typically candid response:

-         ‘I believe in social inclusive wealth creation…Businesses can take all of society with them’

-          ‘Business is the most important part of our society…Only businesses create revenue for the government in the form of taxes paid on their profits and employees’ wages…the taxes they pay pays for the NHS and the public sector. But business has a responsibility to train its people…The bankers had it wrong, business has got to take those at the bottom with them’

-          ‘23% of single mothers have never lived with a man…85% of primary school teachers are female…boys need strong male role models because if they don’t when an older boy asks them to join his gang he becomes the role model, you may disagree with it but we need more men in teaching and one incentive that works is money.’

-          ‘Business encourages human rights…if the Western World hadn’t been trading with China, if we hadn’t let them host the Olympics its citizens would have even less freedom…It’s different for different nations: where they need us more than we need them we can impose sanctions but if we need them as much if not more, realistically we can’t limit trade’

4) Lord Jones also had some strong views on what was the primary cause of the August riots:

- ‘Enhanced, disgusting criminality…look at the locations; in London it was organised and planned to stretch the metropolitan police to their limits.’

What to do about the illiteracy problem amongst Britain’s youth:

-          ‘Fire teachers if too many of their mentally and physically healthy pupils over 11 can’t read, write, count and use a computer…[and] stop parents benefits and replace them with food stamps if their kids can’t read, write, count and use a computer’

And a whole host of other interesting issues (many of which appear in his book if you fancy finding out more).

We then rounded up the discussion, said our thank-yous and left Lord Jones in the company of UpRising Director Alveena Malik, who was delighted to inform us that he had agreed to become an UpRising ambassador. So I’m guessing the programme organisers and us UpRisers impressed him almost as much as he impressed us.

In short, whilst some of Lord Jones’s personal views may be, shall we say, somewhat divisive, there is no denying his belief in the potential of the youth of today and his social conscience. Here’s a final quote from the discussion which, I think, aptly illustrates this dedication to practising the socially inclusive attitude he preaches:

-         ‘Young people are the future – that’s why I’m here on my lunch break giving you pointers…I can’t afford to just give young entrepreneurs money, but I can try and give my time’

He may be blunt and opinionated but he certainly believes in the future of our nation’s business. And his positive attitude is very infectious.


H.B.

'R' is 4 Riots

Last night I attended the Radio 4 Riots debate, run by the today programme. Fortunately when the riots kicked off in Birmingham I was in London staying at my friends house getting ready to take the Eurostar to Brussels the next morning (lucky I was! Had we gone with our original plan of getting the train up late that night we wouldn't have made it!). I watched it avidly on the news, amazed by sights of a predominantly male crowd throwing petrol bombs at buildings, smashing in windows and attacking businesses. 


The next morning our initially pleasant, but distinctly racist taxi driver of unspecified Eastern European origin, took great delight in telling us that the problem was black people and we should treat them like they treat their gypsy population (i.e. badly). We took equal delight in telling him that from what we'd seen on the news this wasn't a race issue: the live reports clearly showed Blacks, Whites, Asians and pretty much every community in-between was represented amongst the thieves, vandals and aggressors. It was a closed minded attitude to blame one racial group. This was not an old school race riot, and this was the major issue I had with the R4Riots debate. 


It seemed to me that a fair few questioners and a few of the panellists were blaming race, calling it a race riot, insinuating that it was just young black men rising up against an institutionally racist establishment. Given that less then half of the 600 people arrested during the riots were black and the primary targets were places like primark and corner shops this sounded, quite frankly, ridiculous to me (at this point I, somewhat nervously, posed a question about why if the issue was frustration with the establishment the rioters were attacking their own communities: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9581000/9581914.stm listen in at about 2min 25 ;) ). I'm not ignoring the fact that these riots started because of the death of Mark Duggen and strained relations between the community and the police in Tottenham. Race may play a part but the issues, and the composition of the rioters, are far more complicated then this. The BBC really need to stop rolling out this old chestnut and, if they must, at least include speakers from Asian and White working class backgrounds too. Times have changed.

Aside from that there were a lot of lefties chatting about how it was all environmental factors and poverty to blame, if we, the wider community, solve that we'll solve criminality and antisocial behaviour (completely ignoring the fact that only a minority of the 'working class' was involved and some rioters were from more privileged backgrounds) one recorded righty blaming the breakdown of morals and respect culture started in the 1960's and a whole host of people simply viewing the whole thing as confirmation of their already firmly held beliefs, picking and choosing the evidence they cited and generally talking pointless nonsense. 


Then there was, of course, the expected nonsensical, illogical rant about how it's all the banks and the politicians fault. No other reason. If just one of the (very vocal) audience members and panellists who maintained this belief had proposed a single reasonable argument other then 'all of the rich are immoral! Bankers greed made people steal televisions! Down with rich people!' I'd be inclined to give this view a chance...but unfortunately I didn't find a sea of unspecifically directed anger and resentment convincing.


Having said that it was very interesting listening to the different opinions and there were some nuggets of insight that seemed to resonate with both the present audience and those on the twitter-sphere. My favourites were:


1) Shaun Bailey suggesting that part of the problem is that we've redefined what government is for in recent years, we've become too dependent on it and those that have the least to do with it (i.e. aren't dependant on benefits/government programmes) are the happiest, stating: "The welfare state started as a safety net, became a hammock and is now a noose". 
2) Shaun Bailey promoting the idea that young people need to be educated in how to raise children before they become parents and it's too late, and stating that young people in prisons are a 'captive audience, lets educate them'
3) Shaun Bailey (yes Shaun Bailey again, that man talked a lot of sense!) stating that parents in this day and age have an incredible tough job fighting against the negative gender stereotypes presented in such places as 'Nuts Magazine' and MTV.
4) Dr Les Henry imploring the audience to recognise that grassroots organisations do a lot of good getting people out of gangs and helping young people turn their lives around before they reach a point where they think it's perfectly normal to engage in a riot, and to help them find the funding they need.
5) Javed Khan quite rightly asking people to stop bashing the police, stop focusing on the rioters and whether they need sympathy or a slap round the face (my words, not his to be clear!) and focus on helping the victims, some of whom have had their whole livelihoods destroyed and been shaken to the core.

...I could go on about how I was unimpressed that the issue of whether the glamorisation of gang violence and violently disrespectful attitude towards the police vocalised in certain popular genres of music (i.e. 'gansta rap') and certain hyper realistic video games could have played a part in bluring the line between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, or the idea that maybe the police were underinformed because people warn eachother but not them (even I got a txt about trouble in my area and I wasn't in the country) weren't mentioned but I suppose there's only so much you can fit into three hours...and this blog post is already excessively long. (Btw if you're interested in other short quotes, views and reviews of the debate check out the #r4riots stream on twitter).


There are a lot of complicated issues surrounding why these riots started. I don't pretend to have a simple answer. All I do know is that with the destruction of the local economy in certain areas, destruction of recently renovated low income areas, the massive cost of police operations, court proceedings, the inevitable appeals and the clean up, any idiot who joined in the riots based on the fact that 'they can't get and job and the economy sucks' has shot themselves in the foot: now there's even less money to go round and the chances of those actually deserving groups who desperately need help (and weren't involved in the riots) getting it are even slimmer. Well done.

H.B.
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